Toronto / November
Debbie's December 2025 blog post highlights recent presentations on Canada’s immigration system.
OCASI Board Chair Alfred Lam served as a witness before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration (CIMM). He was invited to speak on Tuesday, December 2, 2025, as part of the Committee’s study on Canada’s immigration system.
Anita Stellinga, CEO of COSTI—an OCASI member agency—also appeared as a witness.
You can view the recording and read below Alfred Lam’s statement to the Committee.
Alfred Lam – Statement to House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration
November 2 2025
Good afternoon.
My name is Alfred Lam. I am the Executive Director of the Centre for Immigrant and Community Services. We are a settlement services provider that has been serving the Greater Toronto Area for 57 years. I am the Board Chair for the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants and sit on the National Settlement and Integration Council. I also co-chair the Newcomer Inclusion Table of the Regional Municipality of York.
It is an honour to be invited to address the Committee today.
A good immigration process needs to do two things. It needs to encourage immigrants to come to Canada, and it needs to encourage immigrants to stay in Canada. Unfortunately, Canada’s current immigration process fails on both fronts.
To encourage immigrants to come, we must remember immigrants have a choice where they want to go, and if we want more people to choose to come to Canada, we need an immigration process that is fair, consistent and predictable with a goal to offer a clear path to permanent residency for all migrants.
Instead, we currently have a system that is convoluted with a confusing array of different pathways for different populations with rules that change without warning. We end up with tens of thousands of people stuck in limbo, waiting in queues shrouded in uncertain wait times. A story published by the CBC just last month (October 25, 2025) reported processing times for Canadian immigration applications have reached up to 50 years under some permanent residency programs. 50 years. We have newcomers from Hong Kong who came to the country via the "Hong Kong Pathways" who now face wait times approaching 10 years.
Every day our staff work with people whose lives are stuck in various “limbos” created by our immigration process, with skills that we desperately need. The most common sentiment we hear from them is that they regret coming. Canada needs an immigration process that honours the promises we make and our international humanitarian commitments. That is our moral obligation. Only with transparency, fairness and consistency can our immigration process encourage immigrants to come to Canada.
Secondly, to encourage immigrants to stay in Canada, Canada needs an immigration process that is part of the vision of Canada we are trying to build.
If immigration is critical to Canada's future as a country from an economic and population standpoint, then our immigration process cannot operate and function in isolation.
Instead of looking at immigration through a "lens of scarcity" and focus on the strain that immigration will put on our capacity as a country, we need to look at immigration as part of the broader strategic vision to build Canada for the future and to increase the capacity of our economy, boost productivity, strength our healthcare, build housing and infrastructure, etc.
We need an immigration process that not only invites people to come but offers a vision to stay and build a country that belongs to them and their future generations. Where their prosperity will become the country’s success. We need an immigration process that attracts and offers the best from the world clear pathways to use their skills and assets to build Canada’s future.
But instead, our immigration process is mired with self inflicted obstacles that prevent skilled immigrants from contributing to that vision. We hide racist practices behind excuses of qualification control and speak of protecting the best opportunities for “our own”. We end up with non-sensical requirements such as insisting INTERNATIONALLY TRAINED medical graduates must have two years of ONTARIO HIGH SCHOOL attendance to have their credentials recognized. This does not present a vision for Canada that the best from the world would want to be a part of. Contrary to current public opinion, the problem is not we have too many immigrants. The problem is we have too small a vision for Canada.
In closing, I would like to present two recommendations to the Committee:
First, I urge the committee and Canadian government to introduce a broad and comprehensive program for immigration status regularization. This is the fastest way to clear our current backlogs and for people to stop putting their lives on hold and begin contributing to our economy and society. This also recognizes the contributions of the tens of thousands of undocumented workers who are already in the country, who have been critical participants in our economy.
Secondly, we need a credentials and skills recognition process that is consistent across the country, with clearly laid out processes including costs involved and reasonable timelines. Latest research indicates that out of the top 16 professions most in need of infusion of international talents, 10 of them have higher than average departure rates among recent immigrants.
I thank the committee for the opportunity to provide input.